Fourteen months ago Ray Allen walked into a hostile TD Garden for the first time after he decided to bolt the Celtics for the Miami Heat, both angering a fan base and leaving a bitter relationship with some of his most celebrated former teammates.

As Allen prepares to play on the parquet for the first time this season Wednesday night, it's time to recognize that Allen made the right choice in taking what remained of his talents at that late stage of his career to South Beach.

And it's time to fully embrace Ray Allen once again for all he contributed to the recent Celtics championship era.

Rejection is a hard thing to accept in any circumstance and both the franchise and its fans didn't accept it well when Allen took less money to head to Miami just weeks after the Celtics played the Heat to Game 7 in the 2012 Eastern Conference finals.

In retrospect, however, it's obvious that the teams were trains passing in opposite directions.

The Heat were poised for a potential dynasty, whereas the Celtics were one more calendar year away from the roster dismantling that should have seemed so inevitable.

Say what you will about Allen's healthy ego, high level of maintenance and the occasional holier-than-thou attitude that has chafed foes and teammates throughout his career, you have to accept that Allen was smart enough to see all this coming.

He knew that the no-trade provision Celtics president of basketball operations Danny Ainge reportedly offered him after nearly dealing him to Memphis the previous trade deadline was practically worthless. Kevin Garnett's eventual departure shows a team can just as easily come to you six, nine or 12 months down the road and ask you to waive it.

When you have the pride of a player like Allen, you are not about to refuse and stay where you've been told you're clearly no longer wanted.

He was also smart enough to understand that while he perhaps could no longer be the player he was for the bulk of his five years in Boston at age 36, he could be a valuable piece of a championship puzzle in Miami. That scenario played out in storybook fashion when his corner 3-pointer in Game 6 of the 2013 Finals against the San Antonio Spurs saved the season and opened the door to Miami's second straight championship.

Fourteen months ago, the wounds were still fresh as the all-time 3-point king returned to Boston for a surreal Sunday matinee. The day that would become most remembered for Rajon Rondo's torn anterior cruciate ligament diagnosis began with Allen being jeered at nearly every turn.

"I didn't expect to get booed the whole time throughout the game whenever I touched the ball," a clearly disappointed Allen said after the double-overtime loss. "That was interesting."

The reaction during the video tribute — snuck late into a timeout in the first quarter before Allen had entered the game in a way seemingly designed to allow for least possible impact — was mixed at best. Allen was not treated as the returning hero the way Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce and Doc Rivers were this season. He was treated as the enemy.

And, perhaps, on that afternoon he was, as scars remained fresh from his summer spurning of the Celtics.

But it's silly to still think of it in those terms now.

Allen is playing out perhaps the final season of his career, averaging 9.4 points per game in 26 minutes a night as a bench player on a team vying for a three-peat, while Rivers is coaching a contender in Los Angeles after forcing his way out of town just a year later. Garnett could have set his feet in the sand and blocked the trade with Pierce to Brooklyn on draft night, but even he was convinced by that point it was time to let go of what once was in Boston.

Allen just realized it a year early.

Pierce's No. 34, Garnett's No. 5 and Allen's 20 should all one day be hanging from the rafters. While Garnett and Allen only played a total of 11 seasons in Boston, they were two of the best players of their generation with their greatest accomplishments, record-smashing successes and a championship coming when they were together in Boston.

Within a span of six weeks in the summer of 2007, Allen and Garnett arrived in town separately to join Pierce and resurrect a franchise. In time, one can only hope they will stand side-by-side-by-side on the parquet again with each celebrated more for all he did during a five-season championship window than for how he left.

"In my mind, I will always be a Celtic," Allen said in his return to Boston 14 months ago, "regardless of what anybody says."

Wednesday night would be a good time to start treating him like one of the all-time great ones once again.

Scott Souza can be reached at 781-398-8006 or ssouza@wickedlocal.com. Follow him on Twitter @scott_souza.